


Cumberland Way

by astralis



Category: Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:02:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astralis/pseuds/astralis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day after the fire Jim returns to High Topps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cumberland Way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Artifactrix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifactrix/gifts).



> According to "The Little Book of the Lake District", Cumberland Way is a traditional song. According to Google the song does not exist, so the lyrics used are taken from that book and may or may not actually be traditional.

_Cumberland Way, Cumberland Way_  
 _Caw Fell and Steeple at dawn of day_  
 _Wild moor and meadow in sunshine and shadow_  
 _That's where my heart is_ -  
 _Cumberland Way._  
\- traditional song

 

***

In the clear, quiet morning that came after the fire, Jim stopped Rattletrap in front of Atkinson's farm and found Timothy waiting for him. "Hello," said Jim, getting out of the car. The smell of smoke and burning still filled the air, reminding him - as if he could ever forget - of everything that might have been.

"Good morning," said Timothy, with a flash of a brief, shy smile. He had found a new hat to replace the one lost to the fire, and looked like himself again.

Even after everything that had happened yesterday it felt odd to see Timothy here, in the place Jim knew so well. He thought about last night - the warmth of the campfire on his skin, the stars high overhead and everyone telling and retelling the stories of the fire, prospectors praising Timothy and Timothy praising prospectors, all of it simple and natural. He had liked it.

"Come on," Jim said, watching Timothy readjust his hat to keep the morning sunlight from his eyes. "We'll go and see what's happening in the camp, and see if we can find someone - or several someones - to take us back over to the mine." He caught the uncertain look that crossed Timothy's face. "They've decided you're one of them now. Like I said last night, you'll be walking the plank before you know it." 

Timothy, who regarded both boats and swimming as necessities rather than pleasure, looked as though walking the plank didn't appeal to him. "There are rather a lot of them," he said, obviously thinking of the prospectors who had been so efficiently swarming all over High Topps, getting in his way.

"Most of them are harmless." Jim retrieved his knapsack from Rattletrap, handed Timothy the apple pie Cook had insisted on his bringing, and set off knowing Timothy would walk beside him. "It's Nancy you have to watch out for. Nancy and possibly Roger. And I did warn you there would be children at Beckfoot."

"You said you had two nieces, and that they and their friends would be camping on the island."

"Well, I suppose I did." Jim put a hand on Timothy's shoulder, feeling the warmth of muscle and flesh beneath his thin shirt. "I'm glad you're here," he said, removing his hand. "You'll get used to them. They're a lot like me."

"That," said Timothy, a smile playing on his face, "is what I'm afraid of."

***

On reaching the camp they found the prospectors in the midst of preparing for the day's work. Roger and Dick, breathing hard, had apparently just returned from Tyson's with the morning's milk, Dorothea was stirring the tea and Susan, with a rather solemn face, was making buttered eggs on a large scale.

"You're up late," Jim said - last summer, on the island, they had been up with the dawn most mornings - before he remembered that they had had a late night and a busy day. 

"They needed their sleep," Susan said. She had looked up briefly from her frying pan, not so much to focus on Jim and Timothy but rather to look around the campsite as a mother hen counting her chickens. "Have you had breakfast?"

"Yes."

Rather diffidently, Timothy held out the apple pie, and let a grateful Peggy, her shirt still smeared with charcoal, take it from him. "Cook's?" she asked, eagerly.

Roger, leaving Dick to take the milk can to the well where it would be cool, said, "Can we - " as he eyed the pie, and was abruptly interrupted by his oldest sister.

" _Not_ for breakfast. It'll keep till lunch. Grub's up. Where are Titty and Nancy?"

"On the Great Wall, I think," said Dorothea.

"I'll go," said Jim. Peggy was insisting that Timothy at least have some tea ("though of course we haven't any sugar") and it would do him good to be left to fend for himself for a few minutes.

Jim found Nancy and Titty standing side by side on the wall, gazing out across the blackened and burned wasteland of the Topps. They had seen it last night, of course, but he rather suspected they were seeing it anew this morning. Things always looked different after a good night's sleep. "Hello."

"It's rather a mess, isn't it?" said Titty, turning.

It was. Every living thing on High Topps was dead or gone. Jim had seen the devastation wrought by fire before and yet it was shocking all the same. He looked over at Nancy, with her back straight and head held high. "Did your mother ever tell you about the fire on the other side of the lake when we were children?" he asked.

"Above the igloo?" Titty said, when Nancy didn't answer.

"That's right, it was. We were just children then. Younger than Roger is now." Jim and Molly had sat on the Beckfoot lawn, watching the smoke and flames engulf the familiar skyline. Molly had cried, and Jim had wanted to. It had looked like what he imagined war to be. 

(He had learned, later, that war was worse; and yet the sight of those fells had remained with him.) 

Jim wondered whether they understood how close they had all come to death yesterday. They always skirted death in their games; they were still at the age when one feels invincible and yet, if things had gone differently they would not be here now. Jim knew he would not soon forget the frantic drive from Beckfoot to High Topps, wondering all the while if he ought to have left Molly and Dick at home until he knew what they would find when they got there, or the panicked run up through the woods to count heads and count them again. If Timothy and the older children had not been able to get into the mine in time, if the younger ones had been trapped by walls of flame, if Sappho had not carried Titty's message straight to Beckfoot it would be a very different world this morning. 

"It won't be like this forever," he said, concentrating on what was easiest to fix. "By this time next year you'll see a real difference."

Titty looked quickly at Nancy, but Nancy was still staring into the distance. "A whole new world," Titty said. "Next year there'll be grass here that no one has ever walked on."

"Like the prairies," said Nancy, finally. "We could have a wagon train. Travelling west."

"But we've already found gold," Titty said. "Well, copper."

"We don't need gold. We're rich settlers, looking for new lands for our vast herds of cattle." Nancy Blackett, prospector, explorer and captain of the pirate ship _Amazon_ turned away from High Topps, ready now to face the day.

"Susan says grub's up," Jim said, belatedly remembering why he'd come. The captain and the able-seaman marched back to camp talking of ranching and covered wagons and he followed along behind, temporarily forgotten.

***

Breakfast over and washing up done, the S.A.D.M.C and associates made its way to the mine. Nancy started 'Spanish Ladies' before they'd even left camp and all of them sang resolutely as they walked over the barren land. No one dawdled on the way and even Roger the mischievous seemed intent on simply getting there as soon as possible.

There was little to be accomplished with ten people in the mine. Everyone wanted to take his or her turn banging away at the vein, and even with Susan to insist firmly on people taking turns and not all hammering at once, bits of rock were soon flying everywhere. Jim decided that it would be safer, and would provide more elbow room, were he and Timothy to go outside. Timothy cast one despairing glance at the vein, and followed him out.

They sat with their backs against the rock of the cave.

"Under my nose the whole time," Timothy said, beginning a conversation in the middle the way he so often did. "I should have seen it. Pointing straight here, but with so many children popping up all over the place I couldn't think straight. But wonderful stuff. Better than I've seen in years."

Jim looked up into the clear blue sky. In the back of his mind copper was still secondary to near disaster, lending an added urgency to life. "You'll stay, then?"

"Better than traipsing across South America, looking for what doesn't exist." Timothy smiled his shy smile again. "I do like it here," he said, as though to reassure either Jim or himself. It was true enough; Timothy didn't say things he didn't mean.

Behind them, people were talking and laughing amid the tap-tap-tap of hammers, the noise muted by rock. A voice rang out above the din. "Look out - oh, _Roger_!"

"That's Susan," Jim said.

Timothy looked back at the mine. "What they lack in mining skill they make up for in enthusiasm,” he said, apparently both resigned and amused.

"That's the one thing they don't lack. That, and imagination." 

***

They all went back to camp for dinner, everyone carrying a piece of quartz flecked with copper that he or she had decided to be important. Jim had a sneaking suspicion that all of it would be smuggled back to school, a treasure to be displayed proudly, or tucked away in some secret place away from the prying eyes of Matrons and schoolmates.

The mates served up pemmican and bread and butter and Cook's apple pie for dinner. "It'll be pemmican for supper as well," said Susan. "We're running low on stores."

"Never mind," Nancy said, passing a plate of pemmican to Timothy before layering her own between two pieces of bread and butter. "We'll be breaking camp in the morning anyway. The Callums are coming and the Ds will be wanted at Dixon's farm, and your mother and Bridget are coming to Beckfoot so it's back to the garden with the rest of us."

"And then when Mother goes to Holly Howe we'll have _Swallow_ and we'll all be camping on Wild Cat Island," said Titty with relish. "Dick and Dot have never camped there."

"Rowing to Dixon's for the milk in the morning, not climbing up and down that beastly hill. Living off the fish we catch," Nancy said, picking up where Titty left off. "Remember Roger's shark?"

The sun on his face, Jim stretched out beside the fire with Timothy sitting close beside him. Despite the exertions of the day before Jim had managed very little sleep, and before that he had been in London where sleep was always hard to find amid the noise of the city. He had left London yesterday on the early train, and had felt himself in No Man's Land for much of the journey. Only after changing trains at Strickland Junction had he begun to relax, because always for him Strickland Junction had marked the border between home and away. Now, listening to the others chatter and to Timothy joining in, he closed his eyes just for a moment, knowing that today all was right with the world.

"Uncle Jim's asleep," said Peggy, later. 

Jim considered protesting, affirming his dignity in front of miners and explorers and Timothy, but somehow the words never came.

***

He woke in silence and shade, the sun having passed behind the trees. "Good afternoon," said Timothy, from where he was lying on his stomach with a book.

Jim sat up, a little disoriented: not Pernambuco or anywhere else, but home, and Timothy. "Where is everyone?"

"Gone back to the mine. Nancy said she wanted to get a good start on the mining before we took over. Dick tried to point out that what they can do with their hammers is nothing compared to what we'll do when we start blasting, but - "

"But Nancy didn't listen. Well, let them have their fun. In a few days they'll be on the island, and we'll be walking the plank."

"Susan told me to make you tea when you woke up," Timothy said, leaving the book - Jim's copy of _Phillips on Metals_ , borrowed from his study by some eager prospector - where it was, and disappearing into the stores tent. 

Of course she had. Well, he could use some. Jim stood up, legs still aching from yesterday's dash through the woods, and went to fill the kettle at Titty's well before putting it on to boil. Together he and Timothy made tea and sat in the sunshine drinking it.

"I missed you," Timothy said, picking idly at blades of grass.

Scalding tea slipped down Jim's throat. He choked, and thought better of pointing out that it had been little more than a month since they were last together. It also seemed too flippant to point out that he was here now - Timothy was not generally given to emotional proclamations - so he settled for nodding. "Remember Peru?"

It had been their first great adventure. They had known each other first at Oxford, where Timothy had been a year ahead of him at New College; they had met again, quite by chance, shortly after Jim had gone - or been sent - to South America following his failure at Oxford. They had travelled together on and off until the war and again afterwards, always searching for something.

Now, in the sunshine, Timothy's face was almost that of the man Jim had known all those years ago. "I do. Peru, and Singapore, Malaya, Argentina."

"New York."

"Hong Kong."

"Cairo."

"And here we are," said Jim. "Not as exotic, perhaps." He looked around him, thinking of lakes and becks and tarns, the Matterhorn high in the distance, the fells he had roamed as a child.

Timothy followed his gaze, and nodded. "There's something to be said for places like this." 

He looked as though he was about to say something else, but then the sound of voices in the distance hailed the return of the prospectors. By some unspoken agreement they shuffled sideways, putting a respectable distance between them. 

For a silent moment Jim wished the children would stay away a little longer. Then they came pouring into the camp, full of talk and laughter, Susan and Nancy giving orders and Dick bubbling over with a new set of questions, and it occurred to him that there would be time enough for many things once they were back at school.

***

That evening, after Nancy had decreed that breaking camp was to begin immediately after breakfast - "no visits to the mine for anyone" - and Susan had banished the junior members of the party to bed, with the elders shortly to follow, Jim and Timothy made their way back to Atkinson's farm, and Rattletrap.

The world around them was silent and still. There was never anyone on the Dundale Road at this hour, and there were no prospectors up look out trees or snaking through the woods hunting for enemies. Jim leaned against Rattletrap, not quite ready yet to take his leave and return to the lights and civilisation of Beckfoot.

Timothy put his hands into his pockets and took them out again, and then came to stand beside him. Together they looked up into the sky, as they had done so many times in so many places. "Come and stay in the houseboat," Jim said, on impulse. "After the battle and the plank walking. Stay for a few nights." The houseboat was as far from the mine as Atkinson Ground was from Beckfoot. Perhaps they would always have to contend with distance.

"And what will your sister think of that?" Timothy asked, his words careful and measured, almost tentative.

"She won't," Jim said, feeling somehow disloyal. Molly had had to put up with a lot over the years; had at times taken the burden of his choices on herself, particularly when they had been children at the mercy of an aunt. She would choose not to think too hard about Jim and Timothy and what that might mean (Jim didn't even know himself), simply because it would be easier that way. That was part of her way of protecting him, and protecting herself. Maybe one day he would be able to adequately thank her for that.

"And what about the parents of the other children?"

Jim considered Mrs Walker, whom he knew a little, and the Callums, whom he knew not at all. "After they've gone, then," he said. He wanted Timothy on the houseboat because the houseboat was a part of him; when he had thought about Timothy here he had pictured mornings and evenings in the houseboat as much as he had imagined Timothy in the village pub, Timothy on the fells, Timothy standing tall on the peak of the Matterhorn.

"All right," Timothy said, his smile quick and bright.

There was a lot more to be said - things that they had never yet managed to say. Jim wondered if, perhaps, he would say those things here, or if Timothy would be the first to speak. 

But for now, at least, he would breathe the air of home - still tinged with smoke and charcoal, but home all the same - with Timothy warm beside him, and he would be sentimental in his old age.

***  
***

_Like the old song said, I had ranged and roamed "all over the salt seas". Looking back I think I knew, when I arrived home that summer, that things were changing. The desire for blue water and new sights would never entirely leave me, yet it became easier to stay, to wake every morning to the world I had known as a child. There were no more great adventures, though there were plenty more smaller ones, both locally and abroad._

_Instead my world was the mine and my houseboat, evenings in the village pub and mornings fishing on the lake. I had my sister and my dearest friend, and my nieces and an array of other children in the holidays, and then there was no need to go searching for what I already had._

_I had come home, and was happy about it._  
\- extract from _A Lakeland Life_ by James Turner, London, 1953.


End file.
